Part: 3 of 4. Sorry they're all so short. :(
Rating: This is the chapter where I had my doubts. Nothing is described (sorry people), but it's pretty obvious still what is going on. And because of ff.net's new rules on NC-17 fics this *definitely* isn't NC-17, but one might perceive it as more than PG-13. So, just to be on the safe side, this one chapter is R. Though, I tell you again, not a graphic scene in sight. Thanks again to all who reviewed. You guys are wonderful. :)
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I smelled her.
I smelled her then, coming up behind me, even though her treads were as light as snow falling on cedars. And in the moment I turned to her and my breath was caught in my throat, I knew it was to be like this. Like this, forever. Even if I saw her every day whole I'd remember this time, and it was not because of the lovely gown she'd put on, the one I'd searched out for her, or the matching cabochons that shone in the firelight.
It was because she'd come to me, willingly, and was standing there smiling, expectant, expecting as much from tonight as I had, and still did.
It was the knowledge of this that stopped my breath and the playing of the harpsichord with my already trembling hands. It was this knowledge that made me get up from my chair and near her, and with that, take the first step in the dawning spell of the long, memorable night to come.
And it was this knowledge, that wasn't knowledge, but fear, for my sanity, odd as it may sound, when Clarice put her hand in her dress and freed her breast, quickly peaky in the open air, and realized my desire with a single drop of Château d'Yquem from her mouth.
A coral pearl to shiver with the fire, and without conscious thought I came to claim my fortune.
I love these breasts . . . Beautifully round and her nipples are like rose buttons rising from the ground, and in her case, a clear battlefield. For though her body in the heart area was free of any visible scars or damaged tissue, I knew her heart had not been untouched by evil havoc. But I was to devour her, and take all hurting away, and this task proved easy for me, natural, as though I had always known. Always known, this day would come, and that she would be mine.
And of course, I had known. But how sweet it would be . . . I had not.
From the moment she bared her single breast, every movement, every touch, but also every stillness simply flowed in time, rocking to its own slow rhythm like an old mother sung lullaby. I was inevitably lost, and never before had loss seemed so very sweet.
For a minute my eyes slid up her form to her face, and how she stood there was perfection. Her neck taut, head jilted to one side like that of a bird, and her lips slightly parted to form sort of an o'.
Through this opening she took breath in and let it out again, and in its natural flow my craving for her switched locations. From her breast I now wanted her breath, only her breath. It was the single rationality in my incoherent thoughts in the fervor of the jeweled moment, for this time with Clarice — Clarice — rocked me harshly, to the very bounds of my authority. I knew only I wanted her breath, and then her lips, and then her tongue, and taste, and saliva, and glory, and want overtook all other.
One single lasting moment of freedom, gone, gone and then she was mine. Heart, body and soul. But the reverse of this exchange was that I had to relinquish power, too. Yet my calculating mind did not even register the loss. The stakes had been high, but the prize well deserved and long, long overdue.
I tasted her.
I tasted her then, that endless moment of bending, bending to her coral and her cream, her essence, oh, glorious, glorious woman, glorious Clarice.
I tasted her wholly, and she was so very glorious she did not even *take* my breath from me, she *was* my breath. The very reason for breathing, for being. I could not picture any other time when I had not been bending to the wine drop quivering on her exposed, erect breast.
It was nectar, it was honey, she was nectar, she was my honey. The honey in the lion. The silver in the iron. My heavenly creature, my Clarice, I had her now and it was so magnificent . . .
It was glory in itself.
I always thought that when I would finally have her, violins would start to play as on cue and I'd hear an aria, any aria, from the opera as the music to the conjoining of our spirits but no. No such thing.
Instead, as I held her then, the silence was my theater and her body the instrument I played that brought heaven down to earth and into this very room, into her. In this silence, this blessed silence of the lambs and my dead sister's screams laid her final redemption, and mine. Now that I held her, the stirring world within us was finally still. We had been forgiven and this was our prize, the utter compensation . . . peace.
The beating of her heart reverberated in the breast I held cupped, and the breaths she drew and released in her own ample rhythm, like the tide, was my only melody. And it was enough to make me lose all control, all of it.
I reached down,
down undiscovered territory,
down, down, down . . .
And then I held her.
I held her warm, held her sweet while I tasted of her fluid and my fingers flooded with her sweetness. And then time revolved and earth was reduced to just this moving of my fingers inside of her. And my utter being was filled with a desire like burning, of want that was more than wanting, of that sweet delicacy that was her and her so through.
She was pure ecstasy. I couldn't get enough of her. That perpetual night I took and I took from her and she begged, screamed, cried for more. My taking was her giving and our lovemaking was its own completion.
I have laid my burning heart into the very hands of Love and let her eat it, this trembling lady beneath my fingers, my Beatrice. Oh, how glorious a thing love is. Glorious like a winter sunset. Chilton was right about that one thing. I know again. And I know now, with certainty, how very much her breath has become my own.
Glory in the footsteps of tomorrow. I am complete. I am she. I am free.
~*~*~*~
Last bit to follow in a day or two.